Don't look now..., or the insanity of Brexit.

I offer the following out of a sense that it would be irresponsible not at least to express my opinion on just how stupid and threatening to the future of Britain and Europe the current Brexit farrago is. Comments welcome.

It is now over two and a half years since the British electorate made the terrible mistake to vote to leave the European Union. The vote was questionable at the time, based on a shabbily and stupidly designed first-past-the-post referendum that no country in its right-mind would stage on such terms on such an existentially significant, constitution-changing vote like this. In the United States any constitutional amendment needs to overcome all sorts of super-majorities on the congressional and state level in order to be enacted. Most referendums on independence votes need at least 50%+1 of the electorate (as opposed to 50% +1 of those who voted) to succeed. As it is, 52% who voted in the 2016 referendum voted to Leave, which is in itself not a decisive majority, but, even worse, with a relatively low turnout that meant that only 37% of the electorate voted to Leave, a decided minority to change the status quo, which was to Remain. There is also the fact that the vote was subject to illegitimate influence from the Russians and illegal financing gave unfair advantage to the Leave campaign.

Perhaps most damning of all, the public actually had little idea what they were actually voting on, apart from a splenetic, xenophobic wish to escape from the interference of all those "Continentals"--because there was no real choice between what Britain currently had, and what it would have in comparison, for there was no deal on the table. They were sold, to use a very English idiomatic phrase, a "pig in a poke". It is only now, after negotiations have been conducted, that the "cat has been let out of the bag" and the British people can know what an awful deal Britain can get from the European Union, with no-deal Brexit that much worse.

This makes any claim about having go through with Brexit to honour the will of the people completely fatuous, whether it is voiced by Theresa May or Corbynite Labour spokespersons. 

It is shocking to me to read the sanctimonious nonsense spouted by Tory and Labour Brexiters about the way asking for another People's Vote, a second referendum, to make sure that the electorate really wants to go through with this absurd exercise in self-harm, is somehow a breach of the public trust. Asking "are you sure, now that you know what you are actually letting yourself in for?" does not strike me as anything other than acting prudentially in the name of the public trust. Many times people choose to want something and only later, once they know the details (cost, need for maintenance, legal responsibilities etc.), do they realise they were wrong and change their mind. Choices need to be informed, or they are not proper choices. The Brexit vote in 2016 was like seeing a lion cub, thinking it was really cute, and taking it home as a pet, without much if any thinking or research into the consequences.

But we could put all that aside, pretend that the Brexit vote was above board, and well thought through based on the information available at the time about what the eventual deal with the European Union might be, and was even the genuine wish of a (slim) majority of the electorate that voted, and still assert that it was a terrible mistake and needs to be second-guessed, and reversed, by a second referendum. This is for a simple reason: the world has changed radically in the last two and a half years, and in such a way that makes Britain's exit from the European Union even more self-harming, tragic and senseless than it was back then. In the summer of 2016, the United States was still at the head of a relatively well co-operating international community, both in political and economic areas. There were problem areas, mostly with Russia as the negative factor (Syria) or Islamist terrorists, and then there was the temporary refugee crisis (caused indirectly by Russia) but overall there was a strong growth in global trade, and in the increasing connectedness of the world we know as globalization. China was at times being awkward, but the TPP was being arranged to counter Chinese over-reach, and in Europe Russia's misbehaviour over Crimea was not as serious as it might at first seem because of the adamantine political strength of NATO. And most of the members of the European Union were governed by pragmatic, liberal democratic governments that understood that co-operation was a better path than demagogic nationalist conflict which could only bring turmoil and misery. If Britain wanted to loosen its ties with continental Europe yet again that would be a silly, over-romanticised return to some odd post-imperial national mid-life crisis, but as long as it was fairly soft it would not be devastatingly awful, just stupid and against the trend of greater international co-operation and communication.

That was then. Now we are living in a world which is much less accommodating or welcoming for a newly "sovereign" Britain. The international community is coming apart at the seams because American leadership has either vanished, or, even worse, is actively trying to break up the many systems of international co-operation that there are. Even if the jury is still out on whether Trump is an actual Russian puppet or not, his regime has had the effect of destroying or removing American leadership of the international community, and, most notably, Trump, it is reported, still wants to withdraw the USA from NATO. Britain has already been shown the true attitude of Russia to its sovereignty in the Salisbury Affair, and if Britain is no longer a member of the EU, relying on NATO might not be an option much longer, if Trump gets his way. So how would EU withdrawal strengthen Britain's ability to stand up to Russia? How would Britain's withdrawal strengthen Britain's ability to stand up to Chinese cheating and infringement of patents and trade rules? By the way, the idea that Britain can simply fall back on WTO rules, which was never really true, is looking even shakier now when the Trump administrations aggressive approach to trade, including its trade war with China, includes threats that it wants to do away with the WTO as well. The world under Trump is a far nastier, dog-eat-dog world than the one of the summer of 2016, and Britain would be much better-off weathering it inside the European Union.

Then again, the European Union would be much better off if Britain remained a member too, and to Britain's benefit. In 2016 this was not, perhaps, such an issue. Britain's presence was always a good idea as a way in which the French-German relationship could be mediated and balanced by a third large power with global significance, Britain, in the mix. Germany especially is interested, and continues to wish for, I believe, Britain's presence to make Germany's otherwise dominant position in the Union less obvious, or threatening. But now there is another factor: it is no longer clear that the EU will continue to be run by member states under reasonable, liberal-democratic, pragmatic and co-operative governments. If Britain does leave, then the extremely worrying trend to nationalist and populist electoral success in the member states might well result, regardless of the best intentions of France or Germany, in an inward looking, pro-Putin, retrogressive continent with severely adverse consequences for Britain's economy and its hopes for a relatively free, prosperous and progressive continental neighborhood. A right-wing, nationalist-led Europe could deprive Britain of even more of its economic power by, for instance, cracking down much more severely on the role of the City in European finances. 

And who knows what the geopolitical situation would be with a no longer supportive America, a Russia bent on hegemony again, and a supine Europe led by a bunch of irresponsible, tin-pot nationalist, xenophobic authoritarians of the like of Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban Matteo Salvini or cynical opportunists like Sebastian Kurz? Of course, the British could always complain about the dastardly Continentals, and whine about the way their protests about the need for human rights and political fairness are being ignored by a (now actually) authoritarian Brussels, but would it not be much simpler and effective if Britain stayed in the Union and was able to fight for "British values" from within the European Union rather than, as Eddie Izzard once put it, being the poor guy with the sponge and wiper on the outside offering to clean your windscreen when you are in a traffic jam?

It seems to me that in the darkening international and European circumstances of early 2019 the vote of 2016 looks even more self-destructive and, frankly, na?ve than it did then. The only reasonable way to hold true to the public trust now is to undo the damage done then, and hold a People's Vote to countermand the first referendum, and get back to creating a better, more prosperous, fairer, healthier, and environmentally more responsible Britain, inside the European Union.